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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29410938">loved for the first time (in what seems like forever)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyaveragewhiteshark/pseuds/prettyaveragewhiteshark'>prettyaveragewhiteshark</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bathing/Washing, Caretaking, Comfort/Angst, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gentle Kissing, Kissing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:20:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,618</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29410938</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyaveragewhiteshark/pseuds/prettyaveragewhiteshark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What had it been? Months, now? Of going through these puzzles and theorems day in and day out, losing herself to the windowless dark of the Canaan House basements where time passed like it had somewhere else to be and her only companion most of the time was the sound of her constructs dissolving into dust as trial after trial got the better of her. All that on top of the frankly humiliating incident with her cavalier in the pool, which had given her cause to press her already bruised and bleeding nose even more firmly to the grindstone. Every time she was around Gideon, her cavalier looked at her differently, with eyes that were filled with questions and something else Harrow couldn’t - wouldn’t - name.</p><p>--</p><p>A one-shot following the pool scene, where Harrow has still not managed to come to grips with the way she's let down her walls to Gideon. Angst and hurt/comfort fluff ensues.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gideon Nav &amp; Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>137</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Locked Tomb Prompts</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>loved for the first time (in what seems like forever)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic was inspired by a prompt from the crowdsourced Locked Tomb prompts on Dreamwidth, linked here --&gt; https://lockedtombprompts.dreamwidth.org/365.html#comments</p><p>The prompt was "Gideon washes Harrow's hair...but it's about the pining." This fic definitely took an unexpected turn as I was writing, but I managed to get to the hair washing in the end. Hope you guys enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Harrowhark Nonagesimus was about to pass out. This was not a new or otherwise unfamiliar phenomenon - passing out was practically one of a necromancer’s rites of passage, and she would have felt entirely unlike herself if she went more than five to seven days without going unconscious from blood loss. Especially here in Canaan House, where she had performed significantly more demanding necromantic work than had ever been required of her in the Ninth. But today, now, as she made her way with as much decorum as she could manage down the ruined hall toward the Ninth bedchambers, she realized that this was more than the familiar pulling blackness of a fainting spell. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What had it been? Months, now? Of going through these puzzles and theorems day in and day out, losing herself to the windowless dark of the Canaan House basements where time passed like it had somewhere else to be and her only companion most of the time was the sound of her constructs dissolving into dust as trial after trial got the better of her. All that on top of the frankly humiliating incident with her cavalier in the pool, which had given her cause to press her already bruised and bleeding nose even more firmly to the grindstone. Every time she was around Gideon, her cavalier looked at her differently, with eyes that were filled with questions and something else Harrow couldn’t - wouldn’t - name. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow couldn’t stand it, and had gone out of her way to get lost in the halls of Canaan House, seeking the company of the Sixth house when she couldn’t find a better reason to be away from her own chambers. Gideon would be fine on her own, plenty occupied by that bouncing golden retriever of a Third House princess and the ever-wide-eyed, ever-smiling Dulcinea Septimus. The thought put an unpleasant twist in Harrow’s belly every time it crossed her mind. She had no problem associating the feeling with a vague annoyance of the entirely too effusive other women, which, if she was being honest with herself (she wasn’t) was only part of the problem. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She finally arrived on unsteady feet at the Ninth chamber doors, undid the bone wards, and pushed her way inside. Harrow stopped by the side of the massive bed she had been assigned as the Ninth adept, pulled her hood back, and leaned against the mattress on trembling arms, trying to collect herself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That you, Harrow?” came the voice of her cavalier from the other room. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow pinched her eyes shut, grinding her teeth gently in the back of her jaw. “Who else would it be?” she said roughly. “Bone wards, Nav, remember?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She heard the scuffing footsteps of Nav’s boots on the floor, which stopped abruptly as she crossed the threshold of the other room. Harrow waited for Gideon to speak again, but as the silence stretched, Harrow jerked her gaze up quickly to her cavalier. She was watching Harrow with those golden, questioning eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Harrow snapped, feeling slightly more unsteady from the force of the question. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re avoiding me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A long, guttural exhale made its way up Harrow’s throat and out her mouth as she dropped her gaze toward the floor. “I don’t have time for this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’d reckon neither of us do,” Gideon said, and she sounded angry. “We’re in the endgame, Nonagesimus. This is hardly the time to be cutting me out of whatever plans you’re cooking up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t…” The words ‘</span>
  <em>
    <span>need you’</span>
  </em>
  <span> died a blessedly premature death on the back of Harrow’s tongue. She’d nearly forgotten that her frantic confession in the pool had effectively laid that particular falsehood to rest permanently. “I can’t…” she tried instead, and that felt more truthful, even though she didn’t know what was meant to come after it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t help you if you won’t let me,” Gideon said, stepping closer. Harrow felt the world spin and she shut her eyes, clenching her fists around the coverlet to steady herself. “I need you to let me, Nonagesimus. I’m your cavalier. It’s what I’m here for. It’s the only thing in the world that I’m good for, d’you understand that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow’s throat was dry and her knees were shaking. She tried to grasp at her words, any words at all, tried to form them into something semi-coherent, but they wouldn’t come. Her vision was beginning to spot. She felt Gideon’s hands on her shoulders, turning her so they were face to face. Harrow looked into her cavalier’s face and swayed on the spot. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nav,” she said, and passed out. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>When she came to, she was lying on her back, staring up at the mould-speckled ceiling of the Ninth bedchambers. There was something cool and wet being pressed to her cheek, and in a fit of confusion she found herself jackknifing upright, pulling away from the cool and wet as if it might rip her throat out. She found Gideon Nav kneeling at her bedside, frozen with a wet cloth in her hand, staring at Harrow like she was a spooked animal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Woah, hey, keep your pants on, Harrow, it’s just me,” Gideon said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow was breathing heavily, blinking hard. “My pants are on,” she said, trying to sound austere and only managing to sound vaguely strangled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just relax, alright?” Gideon said. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow would have liked to refuse that request wholesale, but at the moment her body seemed to be on its last legs, having used all of her remaining adrenaline to bolt upright. So instead she growled very little and lay back down on the mattress, staring stiffly up at the ceiling. Gideon stood up and left suddenly, and Harrow felt suddenly, inexplicably, very worried that her cavalier had at last plumbed the depths of her patience and was giving up on Harrow all at once. But she heard the tap in the bathroom turn on and run for a few moments, and then turn off again, and Gideon returned with a glass of water in her hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gideon handed her the glass. “Drink,” she said stiffly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow, again, wanted to refuse, but Gideon was not even looking at her now. Her gaze was trained on the dusty headboard behind Harrow, and her face was oddly strained, a tightness around the eyes that was both familiar and alien. It frightened Harrow, and that fear prompted her to sit up slowly, and take the glass of water, and drink it down without protest. Once she had finished, she handed the glass back to Gideon, who took it without looking at Harrow and went back into the bathroom. There was a long moment of silence and Harrow found herself holding her breath, waiting for what felt like an inevitable eruption. But there was only the eventual sound of the running tap, the rounded echo of the glass filling with water, and then quiet again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gideon emerged and set the glass down on the bedside table, then turned and moved toward her own room. Harrow felt a sudden desperation close over her throat, and she said, “Gideon, wait.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gideon waited. She stopped where she was, but she didn’t turn. Harrow thought she saw a flicker of movement in Gideon’s body, a ripple that passed from her neck to her shoulders and down her broad back. Harrow didn’t know what to say next. She didn’t know what to do, and the silence grew, and grew, and grew until her cavalier finally said, “What, Harrow?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow felt very small, and very sorry, and very, very stupid. “I don’t know how to do this,” she said at last. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gideon turned her head, and her profile was a handsome picture of what looked very much like sadness. Then she looked away again. “What did I do wrong?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do wrong?” Harrow scoffed. She did not mean to scoff; it was just such a ridiculous question that she could not help herself. “Nav, you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bull </span>
  <em>
    <span>shit</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Gideon said, whirling. “Don’t lie to me, Nonagesimus. We’ve done a lot of things to each other. I can handle your cruelty, and your insults, and your bloody skeletons, but I will not let you lie to me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> a lie,” Harrow said, feeling as though she would very much like to bury herself in the deepest hole the Ninth had to offer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It has to be a lie,” Gideon shot back, and Harrow realized with a sudden stab of horror that there were tears in those yellow eyes. “Because if I really haven’t done anything wrong, then the truth is that you just don’t want me at all.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The words rang in the dusty air between them, tolling until it faded into silence like the bells of Drearburh. It was a stunningly untrue statement, so deeply false that Harrow felt herself floundering for her words again, only this time it wasn’t because unconsciousness was creeping up on her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nav,” she said helplessly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you want me to beg?” Gideon Nav blurted. “I’ve never tried it before, but I could give it a go. I could beg. I’d do that for you, Harrow.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow shook her head, but Gideon stepped forward and, to Harrow’s sheer, unadulterated horror, she fell to her knees. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” said Gideon Nav. “I’m begging you, Harrowhark. Let me be your cavalier. Let me help. Whatever it is you’re doing, let me be at your side.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Griddle”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can protect you. I give you my sword. I give you my strength.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Griddle, stop-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Everything I have, everything I am, is yours-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gideon,” Harrow said desperately, “I can’t accept you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gideon Nav fell silent at that. Her expression was rife with pain and confusion and Harrow, coward that she was, couldn’t bear to look, and she buried her face in her hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can’t accept me,” Gideon said softly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t,” Harrow said again, her voice muffled against her palms. Then she looked up. “Gideon, I am in your debt for the rest of my life. For all the injustices you suffered because of me, I cannot accept what you offer me. You owe me nothing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>care</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” said Gideon fiercely. “I told you in the pool, I forgive you. I forgave you every time, and I forgive you now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It doesn’t matter,” Harrow cried. “I am nothing to you. I should be nothing but the dust beneath your heel. I cannot ask you for anything, not for your sword, not for your protection, not for any part of yourself. I owe you everything I am, not the other way around.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No-” Gideon tried to say, but Harrow was there first, and she felt her heart bleeding because she had to do this, she had to let her stupid, stubborn, brave, beautiful cavalier go, and the thought of it made her want to plunge into the deepest hole of the darkest Hell and never resurface. But for Gideon Nav, she would stay. For Gideon, she would do what she must. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gideon Nav,” Harrow said, every syllable ripped deliberately from the depths of her lungs, “in the name of the Ninth House and by the authority I hold as Reverend Daughter, guardian of the Locked Tomb, I release you from your duty to the Ninth House, and to me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Gideon Nav said, kneeling there in the dust. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are free,” Harrow said. She was hollow now. But it was alright. “Gideon, I set you free.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gideon was quiet, looking up at Harrow through those sun-gold eyes. There was a silence, long and unbearable. Harrow waited for Gideon to rise, to gather her things, to walk out the door and never look back. But she didn’t. Gideon stayed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Has it ever occurred to you, Harrowhark Nonagesimus,” Gideon said slowly, “that I </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> this? That I offer myself to you, not because I feel obliged or duty-bound to the Ninth House or the Locked Tomb or any of that other bullshit, but because I </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> to?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Harrow was being honest (she was), no, that particular thought had never occurred to her. It didn’t make any sense. There was no foundation for it. Gideon had suffered under the shackles of the Ninth House, under the hatred of Harrow’s parents, under the cruelty of Harrow herself. Harrow </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> the Ninth House. She was all its coldness, all its blackened rot, and she had made Gideon suffer because she had been suffering, and there wasn’t a single reason in the universe why Gideon should not have wanted to turn tail and run from it all, run from Harrow, the instant she had the chance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t make sense, but it must have been true somehow, because Gideon was still here, kneeling before her as she never should have knelt before anyone, not God, not the Ninth, and certainly not Harrow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Harrow whispered, very feebly, “You can’t.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Gideon said, “Why? Why not, Harrow?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Harrow found that she could not answer, because all the reasons that fluttered forward (</span>
  <em>
    <span>Because I was cruel to you. Because I am an abomination. Because my house has never been anything but the noose around your neck.</span>
  </em>
  <span>) were reduced to ash in the furnace of the promise Gideon had made her that night in the pool. The promise that Harrow had buried deep, that Harrow had all but convinced herself to forget. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>One flesh, one end. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow moved, then. She maneuvered herself as steadily as she could off the edge of the mattress, down into the dust with Gideon, and she knelt before her cavalier. Harrow reached out and took Gideon’s hand, her warm and strong and calloused hand, and she raised it to her mouth, and kissed it. She kissed the palm, she kissed the muscled heel, she kissed the knuckles and their scars. Then she hunched over, her head bowed to the Ninth House cavalier, and she pressed those knuckles to her forehead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because I am not worthy,” she said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a long silence. Gideon pulled her hand away, and Harrow let her go, keeping her head bent low. It had worked, then. She had convinced Gideon to abandon the fight at last. Harrow felt her heart break, and she let the pain flood her chest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then Gideon said, “You’re such an idiot, Nonagesimus,” and her hands were on Harrow’s jaw, pulling her face up to the light. Harrow opened her eyes, and found Gideon haloed in the sun, looking at her with such warmth it felt like some kind of war crime that Gideon Nav had spent her whole life in the coldest place in the universe. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I belong to you,” said Gideon. “Whether you think you’re worthy or not, I don’t care. I am yours. Let me be.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow felt tears in her eyes, and all she could do was nod. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Promise me,” Gideon said. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I promise,” Harrow promised. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good,” said Gideon, and kissed her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The world split open before Harrow, unfolding itself in wide, burning swaths beneath the gentle press of Gideon Nav’s lips. Harrow was accustomed to the taste of bodies, of what lay beneath their surfaces. She had licked up her own blood from her cracked lips, and she had tasted the salt and rust of her blood sweat as it streaked down her cheeks and slipped into the sides of her mouth, mingled with the taste of bone and ash, and the grease of her own face paint. She had thought herself familiar with the taste of viscera, of what a human body evoked when it was opened. But she could not have been less prepared for the taste of a kiss, and certainly not for the taste of a kiss from Gideon Nav. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It tasted of Gideon, of course, golden and warm and enveloping, and ever so slightly of dust. Harrow found herself surprised by the softness of it, by the absolute gentleness with which Gideon kissed her. Harrow would never admit this to anyone, but she had gained most of her knowledge of physical interactions between two living beings from the skin mags Gideon kept hidden beneath her bed. Harrow had not </span>
  <em>
    <span>meant</span>
  </em>
  <span> to learn so much from them, but they had caught her eye once when she was planting a few spurs of bone in Gideon’s room with the intention to frighten the life out of her when she returned to her quarters that evening, and in her curiosity she had gotten quite lost in the flesh-colored pages until she heard Gideon’s footsteps down the hall and beat a very flustered retreat from the premises, completely forgetting to leave her bones behind. Her eyes had burned for weeks afterward with the images of hands and legs and other assorted body parts being inserted and otherwise contorted in all manner of rough and thrillingly uncomfortable-looking ways. She had not seen a single kiss, nor any hint of gentleness in the whole mess, so it came as a great surprise now that Gideon was holding her face as though she were precious, and her lips were moving very slowly, and very softly, and there was not even a shadow of the frankly frightening lasciviousness she had met in </span>
  <em>
    <span>Sultry Scholars of the Sixth.</span>
  </em>
</p><p><span>Harrow kissed her back, because she could not have done anything else in that moment but lean forward and in towards the warmth that Gideon offered her so freely. She did not deserve it, </span><em><span>she</span></em> <em><span>did not deserve it</span></em><span>, but she felt like she might come completely undone if she pulled away, so instead she pressed in against Gideon’s mouth, and reached up to touch her face carefully. Gideon made a small sound and wrapped her arms around Harrow’s shoulders, pulling their bodies flush together. Then Gideon leaned back, unfolding her knees, and carefully shifted so that her back was pressed against the wall, all somehow without disturbing the kiss. Harrow found herself half-curled in Gideon’s lap, with Gideon’s arms cradling her carefully and one hand cupping her jaw. Harrow felt very small and very, very safe.</span></p><p>
  <span>She sank into the kiss, allowing it to overwhelm each of her senses. Their mouths moved carefully in tandem, noses pressed to cheeks, breaths spilling across skin in the moments where their lips parted, tongues surging softly together and apart again. Harrow noticed a strange, warm tension in her chest, a sort of fissure, a weak point that only ever appeared in Gideon’s presence, that was more prominent now than it ever had been as she lay in the arms of her cavalier. She felt certain that it was going to split, and everything she had ever been would come pouring out, leaving something else new and golden and perhaps not completely broken in its place. Her whole life she had fought against that fissure. She had resisted the promise of redemption that Gideon’s very existence offered her with all the desperation she could muster, and her resistance had made her cold and callous and cruel. It had pitted her against the red-headed child of the Ninth. It had proven Harrow wrong in every sense, at every turn, and now, wrapped in Gideon’s strong safety, Harrow dropped her weapons and her resistance, and allowed herself to break open. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It did not hurt. It was not the cataclysm she had expected. It was a swift unstitching, a loose thread tugged, and something at her very center unfurled as though it had been there the whole time, waiting to be loosed. In the unfurling, Harrow found she was made new. In the pool, she had confessed her sins, and Gideon had forgiven her instead of drowning her like a rabid dog, but Harrow had not let it in. She’d resisted Gideon’s goodness as she had resisted it her whole life, but in a moment of strange, confusing clarity, she realized now that it was yet another cruelty for her to turn her back to Gideon’s forgiveness. Harrow did not deserve it, Harrow would never deserve it, but Gideon did. Gideon deserved her kindness to be received, not rejected, as it had always been. And for her, Harrow would try. She would try. She should have done this long ago, Harrow thought, but something kinder in the back of her brain said, yes, but better late than never. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A swift, exhausted shudder ran through Harrow’s body, breaking the kiss involuntarily. Their lips parted, but their heads did not, their brows still pressed close, their noses brushing. Gideon opened her eyes, and Harrow noticed with some embarrassment that her nose and cheeks and lips were smeared with dried blood and grease paint. Harrow reached up without thinking, pressing the smudges away from Gideon’s skin. Gideon laughed quietly, a low exhale that spread her warm breath across Harrow’s cheeks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re a mess, Nonagesimus,” Gideon said quietly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you’d let me go I could use the sonic,” Harrow said, finding herself quite unable to put any semblance of bite into the words. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve got a better idea,” said Gideon, and in a strangely thrilling movement, she got fluidly to her feet while still cradling Harrow in her arms. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow had never been carried before. There was a time she would have ripped the eyes from the sockets of anyone who so much as attempted to pick her up. But her body was still very weak from when she had fainted before, and besides, she had had the skin of Gideon’s face beneath her nails before, and that was an experience she was none too keen to revisit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Ninth House cavalier carried Harrowhark into the bathroom and lay her in the empty tub on the floor so her back was propped up against the sloped edge. “Scootch,” Gideon said, nudging Harrow’s bare feet away from the faucet. “I need to get the temp right.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow should have fought her. She should have hissed something acid and vile, should have called her a name or thrown a construct to remove Gideon from the room and allow Harrow to do this on her own, as she always had, as was her birthright. But she didn’t. She watched as Gideon turned on the tap, and she did scootch her feet away from the unexpectedly cold splash. Gideon tested the water with her fingers, and then plugged up the tub once she was satisfied that the temperature was acceptable. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow had never taken a bath before. The idea of it was foreign and frankly a little unsettling. But as the warm water lapped around her feet and still-clothed legs, she could not deny the pleasantness of the sensation. As the water rose to Harrow’s waist, she said, “This had better not be an attempt to drown me, Griddle.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gideon smiled and turned off the tap and picked up the bar of soap perched on the edge of the tub. “Oh, don’t pretend like you weren’t hoping for it in the pool, you little freak.” She dunked the soap into the water, working it into a lather between her palms, and then knelt near Harrow’s head, reaching toward her face. Harrow caught her hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can do it,” she said. “I’m not helpless.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know that,” Gideon said. One of her hands closed over Harrow’s, and Harrow realized she was trembling. “But I can help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow withdrew her hand and leaned back. Gideon washed her face carefully, taking the wet cloth from the sink to clean the paint and blood and bone residue from around her eyes and mouth. Then she tilted Harrow’s head back, cupping water in her palm to pour over her hair. The water trickled through Harrow’s scalp and down her neck making her shiver. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is it too cold?” Gideon asked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Harrow said, her eyes closed. “No, it’s fine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once her hair was completely soaked, Gideon lathered the soap in her hands again, and moved around to kneel behind Harrow. She worked her fingers into her hair, massaging her scalp, and a sigh escaped Harrow’s lips before she could stop it as she felt herself relaxing almost completely into the sensation of Gideon’s hands. Gideon paused the washing for a moment, pinching carefully at something in Harrow’s hair and pulling it out along the wet strands until it came free. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You saving this for later?” Gideon asked, opening her palm in Harrow’s eyeline to show a fragment of bone resting on her palm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, Griddle, I keep bone in my hair just in case I don’t have enough on the rest of my person.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a pause. Then Gideon said, “See, I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course I’m not being serious,” Harrow murmured, closing her eyes again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘Of course,’” Gideon groused, though Harrow could hear a small smile in her voice as Gideon resumed her steady massage of Harrow’s head. “No ‘of course’ about it, my osseous oligarch. I never can tell just how precious you’re going to be about your darling bones.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow nearly fell asleep to the feeling of Gideon’s hands in her hair, and was only roused when Gideon began pouring water back through it to rinse the suds away. Gideon protected Harrow’s eyes with the flat of her hand as she worked, and Harrow felt as the water ran down the sides of her face and neck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There,” Gideon said finally. “All clean. Stay here, I’ll be right back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She left, and Harrow heard her rummaging around in the other room before she returned with Harrow’s other set of clothes in her arms. Gideon set the clothes on the counter, then pulled a towel from the rack and draped it over the side of the tub, careful not to dip it in the water. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll leave you to it,” she told Harrow. “Call if you need me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then she left, closing the bathroom door behind her. Harrow took a moment to gather her strength, then finally climbed out of the tub and stripped off her soaked clothes, deciding to leave them in the tub for now instead of making a wetter mess on the floor. She toweled dry, and dressed herself carefully, leaning against the counter for support, then stepped out of the bathroom, feeling clean and strangely naked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gideon was resting in the trundle bed at the foot of Harrow’s, and she lifted her head as Harrow emerged. Harrow didn’t meet her eyes as she climbed back onto her own bed, feeling utterly worn out. She lay down, curling into a ball. There was quiet in the room. Harrow could practically hear Gideon watching her. She was afraid. But she was new, and she closed her eyes, and took a deep, slow breath, and said, “Come here, Nav.” Gideon’s footsteps were hasty and she was standing at Harrow’s bedside in the span of a breath. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harrow looked up at her. For all her biceps and bulk, Gideon’s face looked very soft and very young. She seemed to be holding her breath. Harrow shimmied back on the mattress, and patted the empty space beside her once. To her credit, the Ninth Cavalier did not make Harrow ask a second time. She lay on the bed with surprising quickness, shifting only a little to get comfortable, tucking her arm beneath her head as she gazed at Harrow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m tired,” said Harrow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then Harrow gave in to the ache of her body and leaned forward and pressed herself into Gideon Nav’s chest. Gideon enveloped her immediately in her arms, tucking Harrow’s body against her side, resting her chin protectively on the top of her head. They did not say anything else. They did not need to. Harrow fell asleep in the embrace of her cavalier, and she did not wake until after sunrise. </span>
</p>
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